Stephen Says

Writing is hard.  

Or maybe being a writer is hard.  The actual act of writing is not too difficult, but BEING a writer is hard.  Which sucks because that is what I would like to be. 

I’ve said before how writing is therapeutic for me, which it is.  But it’s more than that.  It’s how I think and how I view the world. Things occur around me or I observe something or someone in action and it strikes me as funny.  It reminds me of something else.  It disgusts me to my very core.  It provokes some kind of reaction in me and my brain goes into writing mode.  Immediately sentences begin forming and ideas are suggested.  I starting thinking in prose and wondering what conclusion I will reach at the end of my stream of consciousness.  Literally I go around writing all day long.

The trouble is that while all this writing is going on I’m actually driving, showering, eating, working, sitting around with people, or somehow otherwise engaged so that although my brain is writing, there are no actual words hitting the page.  Though I’m constantly reacting and thinking and planning the next clever turn of phrase, none of it actually ever lasts.  Sometimes I am smart enough in the moment to record a particularly noteworthy thought using my phone or a scrap of paper, but mostly these things just disappear into the vast and murky swamp that is my brain.

This is totally stupid and totally my fault.  I want to write.  I have been encouraged to write by family, by teachers, even by friends, although I think they mostly are just being kind.  Even I, with my moderate to lower middle levels of self-esteem actually think I have potential in this area.  But most of the time it’s just one of those great ideas for a project that never quite gets off the ground.  

When times such as these come around I generally turn to the wisdom of those I admire to pull me through.  I look for quotes or essays from some person past with whom I happen to be mildly obsessed.  In this case that person happens to be Stephen King, an inarguably prolific writer who happens to be capable of writing far more than your basic horror novel.  (If “horror” if what you think of when you think of him, then you’ve obviously not read enough of his work.) 

King has written an astonishing number of books, novellas, and short stories, the majority of them being of the horror or thriller genre.  The most terrifying book he ever wrote in my opinion is a non-fiction work called “On Writing”.  In it he outlines not only his experiences, but his rules for writers and I tell you it will make the aspiring writer in us all cringe and develop a strong desire to eat our own hair while crying in the corner.  

Disclaimer: I do not actually own a copy of this book.  The copy I read was borrowed and I never acquired my own for fear that simply having the book nearby would give me nightmares of failed writing endeavors.  As a result I am paraphrasing all of the following from memory, so my apologies if I’m not exactly accurate.

First of all, Stephen says that if you want to be a writer, you have to first be a reader.  Read everything you can get your hands on.  Devour entire libraries.  Even if its something you don’t usually have a taste for, give it a try.  You may find an author with a voice that speaks to you in a unique way and inspires you in your own work.  I have found this to be valuable, although I know I don’t read as much as I should to get any real benefit.  Still this bit of advice has encouraged me to explore the work of David Sedaris, Mark Twain, J.K. Rowling, Michael Shaara, Neil Gaiman, and Stephen King himself, some of my favorite authors who write in a voice that just makes sense to me.  Then there are writers like George R.R. Martin, Jane Austen, and J.R.R. Tolkien, who make me work a little harder for comprehension, but are well worth the effort.  Stephen has yet to inspire me to attempt Faulkner or Hemingway again, but as he says, you must read if you wish to write.  Even though I’m keenly aware of the benefits I’ve gained from trying out new authors, I still don’t actively pursue the work of writers I’ve never read.  I will hear someone on the radio and think, “wow, they’re interesting, I think I’d like to read their book” but then when I get to the bookstore they don’t have those books on hand.  (Apparently the people I find interesting are not interesting enough to have their work carried by a big retailer.) Or they do have those books on hand but they are too expensive and the library is too far away plus I don’t know where my card is and do I even have a library card and ooh look at that a new pattern for a pair of gloves!  Let’s make some new gloves and watch seventeen hours of Gilmore Girls instead of taking a little time to pursue a new writer.  So I don’t do so great with this first cardinal rule.

And since I brought it up, Stephen also says that you do not want to be a writer.  You do not try to be a writer.  You either are a writer or you are not.  It’s like Yoda says: do or do not, there is no try.  Even on days when you know you aren’t going to get anything worthwhile done, you still sit down and write.  You work even when your heart is not in it.  And it is work.  It requires thought and knowledge, research, emotional investment.  You can write for an hour and be exhausted.  You can also write for ten hours and be exhilarated.  But either way you sit down and work.  King tells a story of how he was very badly hurt in a car accident.  (If I remember correctly he was hit by a car while not in a vehicle of his own, so you can imagine the damage.)  He found himself limited in his mobility and he couldn’t get to his usual writing spot.  So his dear wife Tabitha set up a writing desk for him in a more accessible area of the house.  And even though he had nearly died and was broken and uncomfortable, he was able to keep working; he IS a writer.  As I am lacking a Tabitha King-like figure of my own to encourage me and make me work, I have to do it myself.  I must be my own Tabitha and find a way to make the writing happen.  This is truly a challenge I worry about.  It is so easy to get home from work and think, “eh, I’m too tired, it’s not worth it today.  I have nothing to write about.  Nothing worth saying.”  But I can’t let that rule the day if I am to be a writer.  A writer makes time to write, or else he or she is very simply not a writer.

Perhaps the most terrifying point of all that King makes is that not everything a writer write’s will be any good.  All writers produce a good deal of crap in their careers.  For all the work that King has published, he’s probably written twice that amount of absolute worthless shit.  This scares me to death.  I am one of those people who has to do something right the first time.  Take the simple task of hammering a nail into a board.  I first want to watch an experienced person do the task.  Then I would ask a series of questions to make sure I understood the procedure exactly.  Then when I finally took the hammer, God help me if I should miss the nail and hit the board because I would immediately need to make a joke like “well that’s why you can’t drink and hammer” to make up for the fact that I would be shame spiraling because I had failed.  I cannot simply grab hammer and nail and learn as I go.  I watch, I observe, I relentlessly question, and then, when confident I can succeed, I try.  

Writing doesn’t work that way.  I can look to these wisdoms that Stephen King has written and strive to get some use out of them, but ultimately I can’t be certain of success.  There is no way to observe a successful writer.  Most of writing is internal.  There are best practices as there are in most fields, some of which are outlined above, but even so writing is a highly individual specific profession.  Everyone has a different method to a certain degree.  Even if I follow all of those and other good tips to the letter, there is no guarantee that I can succeed.  Its a fact I can’t get around and one I really don’t like.  

I don’t want to write crap and I don’t want to feel like a failure.  But I also don’t want to be fifty-three and telling my children that I have always wanted to be a writer.  I’d rather be one.  Even if I remain unpublished my whole life, I think I could be satisfied with myself if I at least have a huge collection of writings to pass on to my family.  That way when I’m dead at least they can know how whacko I truly am.